ENI – The Church of England has apologized for the damage done by its role in the British transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century and earlier and it has pledged to continue campaigning against modern slavery.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spiritual head of 77 million Anglicans worldwide, said the church had a duty to acknowledge ancestral guilt. "The Body of Christ is not just a body that exists at any one time; it exists across history and we therefore share the shame and the sinfulness of our predecessors," said Williams.
• Lutheran bishops in Denmark are urging dialogue with Muslims following a worldwide furor about cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed that first appeared in a Danish newspaper but have since been reprinted in other European countries in an assertion of press freedom.
Bishops in Denmark call for dialogue with Muslims. "We should dissociate ourselves from the drawings as well as from the burning of the Danish flag with the white cross," said Copenhagen's Lutheran bishop, Norman Svendsen. "It is incredibly important that we go on talking to one another."
• Desmond Tutu has apologized to the global Islamic community over cartoons in a Danish newspaper caricaturing the prophet Mohammed, but urged Muslims incensed over the publication to exercise tolerance and forgiveness in their protests.
"We would wish to send to the [Muslim] community the message of our distress, and hope they will be able … in the end to forgive what has really upset them very deeply," said Tutu while attending the dedication of an All Africa Conference of Churches ecumenical centre named after him in Nairobi in February.
